Snowbound Christmas

by Veronica Tower

Her response increased his confidence, encouraging him to loosen the reins on his passion. His lips pressed more firmly against hers, and his tongue thrust deeper into her mouth.

  Kara’s closed her eyes. Her heart pounded against her ribs. Her breasts heaved with excitement. Her hands left his to reach around his back, and his arms moved in counterpoint to embrace her.

  They slipped off their chairs to better hold each other. Her breasts pressed against his chest and her nipples grew rock hard. Ron’s tongue continued to probe her mouth, increasingly forceful in its demands. His hand slid up her side, beneath the green jacket and over her silk blouse. A mini-spasm ignited in her flesh as his fingers threatened to brush against her breast.

  Startled, Kara broke away from him, staggering back onto her seat. Her breath came in ragged gasps, and heat flushed her face and neck. “I think…”

  Ron pulled her back into his arms, crushing his mouth down upon hers as his arms locked her tight against his body. She could feel his iron length pressing into her stomach, and she couldn’t stop herself from grinding back against him as she thrust her tongue up into his mouth.

  It had been like this with Bobby when they first started dating, all fire and passion, lust and need. They hadn’t worried if people could see them then. They’d just-

  Bobby…

  Kara broke the embrace a second time and floundered back onto her seat. As much as she longed to keep kissing Ron, she knew she was still committed to Bobby. She couldn’t cheat on him! She couldn’t do this! They were in a public bar. What if he walked in upon seeing them? Flustered, she tried to justify pushing Ron away. “I thought we agreed to only one kiss,” she reminded him.

  “I don’t remember a limit,” Ron said, reaching out for her again.

  Kara steeled herself and pushed him away. “I have to call Bobby,” she insisted.

  Ron sat back on his seat, but didn’t return it to the other side of the table. His blue eyes watched intently as Kara took out her phone and hit redial. The line was already ringing before she realized Bobby wouldn’t be home to answer it. She was that flustered. Her breaths remained hot and heavy. She couldn’t seem to think straight. She was just moving her thumb to disconnect the line when Bobby answered on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Bobby?”

  “Kara?”

  “What are you doing home? You’re supposed to be coming to get me.”

  Bobby hesitated a long moment before answering. “Well, I haven’t actually left yet.”

  “Haven’t left?” Kara repeated. “It’s been two hours.”

  “Well, I…it’s snowing pretty hard. I don’t think I can make it.”

  “You can’t make it?” Kara confirmed.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “And you didn’t try?”

  “Well, no. You see…”

  “And you were going to call and tell me when?”

  “Well actually, you see, I put it all in the card.”

  “What card?” Kara asked. The shock was going away now and a cold anger brewed in her belly—anger mixed with embarrassment that Ron could hear her being treated this way.

  “The card I put in your luggage.”

  “What could a card in my luggage have to do with you standing me up at the airport?”

  “Just tell her,” Kara heard a female voice say from Bobby’s side of the phone.

  “Who is that with you?” Kara asked, her voice growing flat rather than shrill.

  “Well, actually, I’m seeing someone else now,” Bobby said. “I explained it all in the card.”

  “You broke up with me by putting a card in my suitcase?” Kara asked, her incredulity finally bringing some emotion back to her voice. “You’re an asshole.” Kara yelled.

  The woman’s voice became clearer over the phone. “Bobby’s my man now! You just stay away!”

  The line went dead.

  Kara stared at the phone in disbelief. It was true they had been growing more distant over the past year, but it shocked her that he hadn’t had the nerve to break up with her face to face. Hell, he could have done it by phone and spared her the trip out here.

  Ron waved the waitress over to their table. “Could you take the champagne away and bring us something harder to drink?”

  Chapter Nine

  “I just feel so stupid,” Kara repeated. She didn’t know how many times she had said it, but it had to be a couple of dozen by now.

  “I understand,” Ron said. It was a new line for him. Mostly he’d responded by insisting she hadn’t been stupid at all.

  “So you think I was stupid too?” Kara asked. She still hadn’t cried, but for some reason the thought that Ron really did think she’d been dumb threatened to push her over the edge. The whole situation was excruciatingly embarrassing—made worse by the fact that she was dumping her personal problems on a young white man. She wanted to get up and walk away, but being alone with her thoughts about Bobby’s betrayal seemed even worse to her than humiliating herself this way.

  “Not at all,” Ron insisted. “I only said I understand what you’re going through. You’re not the only person to be fooled like this.”

  “You haven’t been,” Kara objected.

  “Oh yes I have,” Ron said. “The first love of my life was screwing my best friend behind my back.”

  Kara felt herself sitting up straighter. They were both on the floor of the terminal, propped against the wall where they could see both the display of cancelled flights and the snow falling thickly out the window. Her coat was over her lap like a blanket and throngs of people milled about waiting for information regarding their flights.

  She had greeted the news of Bobby’s betrayal by letting Ron get her a little bit drunk on malt whiskey. It had tasted terrible, but the sharp kick it provided had acted like a slap in her face and helped her firm her resolve to preserve her dignity. Thanks to that drink, there’d been no sudden flood of tears in the bar to mortify her and ruin her makeup. She was grateful for that, even if she’d grown embarrassed by her sudden need to share everything that had gone wrong with her and Bobby.

  Ron had listened patiently, staying by her side and supporting her, buying her a second drink to bolster the first. She still wasn’t sure if he’d intended to make her tipsy. If he had, he’d soon changed his mind, because he escorted her out of the bar and straight to the airport McDonalds, where he’d forced her to fill her stomach with a Big Mac and a salad. They ate the food against one of the terminal walls, because chairs had become quite scarce. Now they sat together beneath their coats while Kara continued to worry about how foolish she’d been.

  She latched on to the chance to turn the conversation on to Ron’s embarrassing moment. “How did you find out?” she asked him.

  “The worst way possible,” Ron confessed. “I walked into her bedroom while she was riding him.”

  “Oh no,” Kara said.

  “Oh yes,” Ron answered. “And I guarantee you that no matter how low and foolish you’re feeling right now, it’s nothing compared to what I felt then, watching Liz grind herself on Adam’s pole.”

  “Wow,” Kara said, agreeing completely that it would have been worse to somehow make it back to Bobby’s apartment, only to find him there with another woman. But she still felt stupid not to have seen what was happening.

  “You know, all that snow is really quite beautiful,” Ron said. “People would pay for a view like this if it weren’t for all the problems circling around it.”

  The sudden change in topic confused Kara and it took her a moment to understand what Ron was saying. Out the windows, much of the manmade world had disappeared from view covered in a fluffy white blanket which slid out into the obscuring storm. One jet was still visible, sleeping under white covers, but the snow fall was vigorous enough to cover everything else.

  “I’ve always liked the snow,” Ron continued. “I’m not saying it can’t be inconvenient but at this stage at least it’s also always beautiful.”r />
  He paused, waiting for Kara to make some response, and she didn’t really know what to say. “I liked the snow when I was a child,” she told him. “It usually closed school for the day and my sisters and I had a lot of fun playing in it with the neighborhood kids. As an adult, it’s seems more burdensome than enjoyable.”

  Ron laughed. “Spoken like a person who shovels her own driveway.”

  Kara found herself laughing as well. “Well I do shovel it!” she defended herself.

  “I live in an apartment,” Ron told her, “but I still shovel my parents’ driveway when the weather gets bad. Thank God for my four wheel drive!”

  He scooted closer to Kara and hooked his arm through hers beneath the coats. “You know what I think you need to do? Go outside and have some fun in the snow again. Toss some snowballs at your sisters and maybe make a couple of snow angels.”

  Ron’s suggestions reminded Kara of the age difference between them. She could see a twenty-five year old going out with his friends and having a snowball fight. At forty, she just couldn’t picture herself doing it. She opened her mouth to voice her objections when Ron cut her off.

  “And don’t go saying we can’t do it here because we’re at an airport. I’m talking about something we should do when we get home to Detroit.”

  “We?” Kara asked him.

  Ron slid a couple of inches closer and patted her knee beneath the coats. “Of course, we,” he told her. “Do you think I want to miss seeing you let your hair down and have some fun?”

  Kara was almost painfully aware that Ron’s left hand remained balanced on her knee just a few inches away from her inner thigh. He’d made the maneuver appear so casual but the end result was that this handsome young man was sitting next to her with his hand touching her stocking-clad flesh. She couldn’t quite believe today was happening. First the snow trapped her in the airport, then Bobby broke up with her in the most cowardly of ways, and now Ron was feeling her knee as he suggested they get together back in Detroit.

  “Are you…are you asking me out on a date?”

  Ron’s incredible blue eyes didn’t blink when he answered her. “Yes, I’d like to get to know you better.”

  She couldn’t restrain herself any longer. One of the issues that had troubled her since she’d met this man leapt up her throat and escaped into the air before she could catch it and censor herself. “You do realize I’m a lot older than you, don’t you?” She hated putting the thought in words, but really the whole situation was getting increasingly ridiculous.

  “Of course,” Ron answered. He never lost his smile. “I have it on pretty good authority that you’re black too. Is this a problem for us?” He leaned in to kiss her as if to prove that neither issue mattered at all to him.

  Kara twisted toward him and put her hand on his chest, pushing back against him to prevent the kiss. “This doesn’t feel right,” she told him. “I just broke up with Bobby. I-”

  “I know tonight has been a shock for you,” Ron interrupted, “but the more I think about it, the more certain I become that you knew in your heart things weren’t right between you and Bobby long before he broke things off over the phone.”

  “I…what makes you say that?”

  “The way you kissed me, for one thing.” Ron’s fingers began to gently stroke Kara, tickling her inner knee and upper calf. His actions both excited Kara’s flesh and increased her uneasiness. But he was using his left hand with both of their backs against the terminal wall. The angles were wrong to let his hand drift higher up her leg, and the coats in their laps would keep anyone else from seeing what he was doing anyway.

  “Your kisses were deep and sensuous. They completely electrified me. And the way your body clung to mine… It was only your mind that belatedly remembered Bobby. Your heart and your body were already questing for new love.”

  Before Kara could answer, Ron twisted his torso to face her squarely. His right hand came around to cup her chin, and he gently guided her mouth to his own.

  Kara closed her eyes and let Ron kiss her.

  Her lips opened at his insistence and her mouth accepted his advances, but she didn’t kiss him back. Instead she sat passively letting his tongue explore her while her heart pounded ever harder in her chest.

  Ron’s left hand pulled out from beneath her coat and circled around her back, his towering strength slowly pulling her against him. Her breasts bumped against him and then flattened against his hard body. Her nipples swelled and the heat rose between her legs. Slowly, almost against Kara’s will, her tongue began to move against Ron’s, teasing, darting, questing with ever increasing passion. Ron’s right hand left her chin to massage the back of Kara’s neck, encouraging her to press her lips far more tightly against him. The urgency of his kisses increased with her participation. There was no tentativeness left now as he struggled to thrust his tongue ever deeper into Kara’s mouth.

  A stranger’s cough brought Kara back to her senses. She broke away from Ron and pressed her shoulder blades back against the wall. Her chest heaved, her nipples throbbed, and her skin burned with a disturbing combination of need and embarrassment. Ron’s arm remained around her back, and she wanted him to pull her up against him again and kiss her some more. But they were in public, and Kara knew she couldn’t let him. Forget the fact that she had to be fifteen years older than him, mature adults simply didn’t make out in airport terminals.

  Most of the people who’d noticed them politely turned their heads, but some continued to stare, and one twenty-something Goth girl grinned openly at them. Kara simply couldn’t continue under these circumstances.

  Ron was breathing as hard as she was. “I wish I could get us somewhere to go,” he said. “But I think we’re stuck here until the snow stops.”

  Kara looked over at him, still struggling to calm her pulse and ease her burning lungs. A minute ago she was afraid Ron was getting too forward, and now she wanted to go anywhere she could to feel his arms around her back and his lips on hers without having half the airport stare at them.

  “I keep thinking we could sneak into a stall in the bathroom, but the airport is just too crowded.”

  That idea splashed a dash of cold water on Kara’s ardor. “You’d take me in a public restroom?”

  “I’ll take you anywhere if you’ll keep kissing me,” Ron told her.

  Kara’s passion immediately rekindled. She wanted Ron to start kissing her again! “I appreciate the thought, but we are not doing it in a bathroom stall. Find me some place clean, and I’ll give you a fair shot at seducing me.” She couldn’t believe she had just said that but she meant every word. Feeling physically desired—especially by a young guy like Ron—was both an aphrodisiac and a highly addictive sensation. She craved the feel of his lips on hers almost enough to start kissing him again despite the public circumstances.

  Ron readjusted the coats on top of them then slid his right hand underneath and onto Kara’s knee. His thumb was beneath her skirt, stroking her inner thigh through her smooth silk stockings.

  “I’m just so frustrated,” they said in unison, then burst into simultaneous peals of laughter.

  “Seriously,” Kara said, after their mirth subsided. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this…good. I like you, Ron. You make me remember feelings I’d almost forgotten.”

  Kara cringed inside when she heard her own words. What was wrong with her? Was she still tipsy from the whiskey? Did everything she said have to remind them how much older she was? She tried to fix the statement, twisting its meaning away from age, without really considering what she was confessing. “Things with Bobby these last couple of trips…well, they were far from great.”

  “You’re not just talking about the emotional stuff, are you?” Ron asked. He lightly squeezed Kara’s leg beneath the coats. “That asshole you were dating wasn’t man enough to satisfy you.”

  Talking about this was mortifying, but it also felt good to get it off her chest. “Lately,” she mumbled,
swallowing the words so that Ron would have to strain to hear them, “Bobby wasn’t even trying.”

  Ron’s hand slid a couple of inches higher up Kara’s thigh. The light caress of his fingers on her smooth skin felt heavenly, even if the temptation he offered was devilish. “I would love the chance to satisfy you,” he whispered. “You’re the most beautiful, exciting, intriguing woman I’ve ever met.”

  Kara stifled a small moan. In the back of her mind, a small voice asked what she thought she was doing and how could this be happening? But for now at least, Kara wasn’t listening to it. “There’s not much we can do about that here,” she whispered back, hoping against hope that Ron could show her she was wrong. His fingers burned against her inner thigh and she desperately needed them to move further up her leg.

  “Yes, there is,” Ron corrected her. He scraped the tips of his nails along her stocking-clad flesh, causing a tremor to work its way up Kara’s body.

  “No, there isn’t,” she insisted.

  “Yes, there is! I have to wait, but you…you deserve a little satisfaction at the end of a hard day.”

  His fingers inched closer, moving over the hem of her stocking to touch the actual flesh of her soft inner thigh. Kara’s pussy quivered with excitement. She couldn’t believe she was letting Ron touch her this way. They were in public! He was a younger man! He was a white man for God’s sake! What was she thinking?

  “As long as we’re careful,” Ron informed her, “the coat will cover us. No one but you and I will ever know what’s happening.”

  “No,” Kara whispered, a spark of sanity momentarily restoring her good sense. She closed her thighs tight on Ron’s hand but the contours of his fingers molding into her flesh felt so wonderful she almost lost her new found determination. “It’s too public here,” she insisted. “If we can’t think of someplace else, we’ll have to wait.”

  Ron wiggled his fingers, pushing against her soft silky skin under the cover of their coats and her skirt. “I want to touch you, Kara.”

  His low voice drove tingles up her spine. Unconsciously, Kara eased the pressure holding her thighs together, and Ron’s fingers prowled forward until the tips brushed the crotch of her panties.